IGF

As sessões principais do IGF na sexta-feira, 5/12, dedicaram-se aos temas de recursos críticos da Internet, em particular alocação de endereços IP e arranjos para a governança da Internet nos níveis nacional, regional e global.

Participei do painel sobre arranjos para a governança, no qual apresentei a visão do governo brasileiro sobre o tema. Abaixo, está a transcrição (em inglês) da minha apresentação (transcrição completa da sessão está disponível em http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/hyderabad_prog/AfIGGN.html ). Ao final, está a transcrição do trecho dos debates, à tarde, em que o Brasil foi criticado por não ter liberdade de imprensa, e a resposta que apresentei.

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>>EMILY TAYLOR:   Thank you very much, Haiyan, for that very clear summary. I’m going to move on through the speakers on the panel, and then we’re going to go to the audience for some initial questions, and I’ll come back to the panel for their closing remarks. Our next speaker is Everton Lucero of the Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.  A career diplomat, Everton is the Brazilian government representative on ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and is also closely involved in the IGF.  Everton is currently based in Washington, D.C.

>>EVERTON LUCERO:   Thank you, Emily.  Good morning, everyone.  Thank you for being here. As the subject of this panel is arrangements for Internet governance at national, regional, and global levels, I will start by giving some examples and comments.

At the national level, there has been a very recent initiative in my own country, Brazil, to fight online child pornography. Google, lawmakers, law enforcement agents, and nongovernmental organizations, signed an agreement that was entitled “a term of adjustment of conduct.”  It was a great achievement in the end of a nationwide debate and an example of a national arrangement that brought together all stakeholders to solve a problem of great concern to our nation. It will certainly help law enforcement within Brazilian jurisdiction.  But there remains the need of an enhanced cooperation at a global scale to target criminals acting from outside the Brazilian borders and jurisdiction.

As an example of a regional initiative, I’d like to refer to the Convention on Cybercrime.  Brazil’s considering its accession or not in the near future. But when we started considering it, we faced one preliminary problem: in principle, we do not adhere easily to conventions that we have not participated in the negotiation process.  The same problem in due course may also happen with the so-called Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, ACTA, an intellectual property enforcement treaty related to Internet activity. Both the cybercrime convention and ACTA made use of a negotiation arrangement that is rather restricted.  And it indicates a pattern of behavior of some governments which openly defend multistakeholderism, democracy, and inclusion, but prefer to follow restricted, behind-doors, exclusive arrangements to negotiate new legal instruments. To the extent that the efficacy of these arrangements will depend on global acceptance, definitely they are not good examples of arrangements for Internet governance.  In case of Convention on Cybercrime, it may work for the region where it was elaborated.

At the global level, let me single out a very positive one, the Numbers Resource Organization (NRO).  It’s a bottom-up, civil society-led arrangement which coordinates a very critical Internet resource, which is I.P. address allocation, and has so far done a great job in ensuring a due process, transparency in decision-making, and full participation by all, with independence. Raul Echeberria is here with us, and I think he will further develop this, so I would just like to refer to it.

Now turning to enhanced cooperation, and building upon the notion that Emily presented in the beginning of our panel, I would like to refine a little bit this concept to propose that the question before us is, in fact, to which extent do the present arrangements for Internet governance enable governments on equal footing to develop public-policy principles on coordination and management of critical Internet resources? I hope that the UN-DESA report will give us hints to answer this question.  Presenting this report is a fabulous first step, and we look forward to comment on it at the appropriate forum, either the CSTD or ECOSOC.

How other existing organizations and arrangements are cooperating to enhance cooperation among governments?  Let’s look at some examples. I’ll start with the intergovernmental ones like ITU and UNESCO. I’d rather say that these organizations are already promoting enhanced cooperation within their mandates, because, after all, to facilitate development of public-policy principles within their mandates is their very reason of existence.  It’s easy because of the membership, as they are government structures from their inception.  They are promoting enhanced cooperation at their own pace, which may not cope with the pace of technological development and innovation that characterizes the Internet.  And that’s a good point.  Let’s remember that. And they might also be faced with the challenge of moving towards multistakeholderism.

On what refers to nongovernmental entities, like IETF and W3C, while these bodies set global standards and protocols, governments are not there.  Should they be?  These are organizations of people, not entities. I believe that if governments want to send participants there, these participants will be received as any other, on their personal capacity.  These bodies are open for them as well. So it seems to me that under the present circumstances, enhanced cooperation may not be an immediate need there.

But this reasoning is not valid for ICANN.  In fact, many people argue that the main reason for enhanced cooperation having been included in the Tunis Agenda was precisely ICANN. Why ICANN? Well, even if ICANN is a non-profit organization, it is market-driven.  It created a huge market of domain names.  It is private sector-led.  And, to many, ICANN is seen as the hen that lays golden eggs.  Besides that, ICANN is under the oversight of one single government. At any arrangement, I think we should work with the options of either having no governments at all, like the case of IETF, W3C, NRO, or we have all governments on board, like ITU or UNESCO.  But we should avoid coming up with a model restricted to a few, like ACTA, and, please, let’s also avoid models driven by one single government, like ICANN.

The World Summit on the Information Society pledged to create a people-centered, development-oriented, and inclusive information society, and invited all entities, public and private, national, regional, and global, to incorporate that vision in their respective works. The Internet is supposed to be centered on people, not money; on people, not market; on people, not profit. My question to ICANN is, when will it pledge to accept and incorporate that vision as its main driven force, instead of privileging a small group of private industries that earn a lot of money out of selling domain names?  Please don’t take me wrong.  I don’t have anything against making money out of this business.  But I challenge anyone here to support the idea that a self-regulated market works for the benefit of public interest, in particular, in light of the current global financial crisis and economic meltdown that we are facing.

Do governments have any role to play in that?  Can governments be of any help?  Yes, we can.  In fact, ICANN is also open to government participation through the GAC, of which I am the Brazilian representative and currently vice chairman. But our role is advisory.  Our contribution may not be observed by the ICANN board. Governments are underrepresented, in particular from developing countries, which leads me to conclude that the current GAC-ICANN arrangements are not conducive to enhanced cooperation and need to be reviewed.  Maybe the ICANN transition action plan debate is an opportunity to do that.

To finalize, I would like to say that in my country, one of the things that we most admire from the United States as an everlasting source of inspiration is its Constitution.  Example for the democratic world, the United States Constitution pioneered the shift of power from nobles and landlords to the people.  It inspired almost every constitution of the democratic world to begin by the words “we, the people.” Let’s hope that the U.S. new administration will be sensitive to the global demands of promoting a shift of power from nobles and landlords of the Internet to citizens and people of the Internet, who are those that should be the very reason of existence of any national, regional, or global arrangement of Internet governance. Thank you very much.

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>>EMILY TAYLOR:   Before moving to the next person, can I just ask for some panel reaction to that. So, Everton, we’ve heard from some speakers that the — you know, the Internet is moving fast, and it seems to be working.  Another questioner here was saying, if governments are not participating, please help us to help you participate. Could you just have a few comments on that?

>>EVERTON LUCERO:   Yes, of course, thank you, Emily. I think that this debate is all about representation and legitimacy in decision-making processes. The Internet started being managed on a personal basis.  Jon Postel knew the technicians, the people involved, distributed some attributions.  But the Internet was small at that time.  It was restricted to universities.  And it evolved so fast, incredibly fast, that nobody could at that time imagine. And the situation that we have now is that we have 1.3 or 1.5 billion people accessing the Internet on a daily basis.  And we are expecting another one billion or more in the next few years. So the structures to take decisions that will affect the uses of the Internet and its users need, accordingly, to progress.

And I entirely agree that the idea of cooperation with all interested parties.  That’s why I mentioned in the beginning of my speech as an example of a national-level arrangement that is valid is the one we reached involving the Brazilian Federal Senate, Google (a private company), SaferNet (an NGO), law enforcement agents  and the Federal Police to fight child pornography and abuse. This is a concrete example that it is possible to mobilize all those interested parties when there is a need, a concrete need, to address a problem that is required by society. But to get there, we needed to have a Federal Commission of Inquiry in the Federal Senate.  And those of you who were here yesterday heard from Senator Magno Malta, the chairman of that Commission, that he had to get close to extreme measures to get those involved into an agreement.  Finally, he managed to do that, and we have something that is perhaps unique:  in a democratic society, we managed to coordinate with all those interested parties to fight a concrete problem related to the Internet.

Now, as for the reference to the GNSO, I’d like to remind you that governments — and this is a position that my government fully shares — governments are not supposed to manage the Internet on a day-to-day basis.  There are roles, and the role of government is to coordinate public-policy issues or issues that have impact on public policy.  Because if governments do not do that, who else would? And to do that effectively, governments need to do it on equal footing and on a global scale, not only by a few.  Because if this process is concentrated, we will not take into consideration the legitimate concerns of the developing world that is where precisely the Internet is growing more and will grow even more in the coming years. Thank you.

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(afternoon session – debates)

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>>MARK BLAFKIN:  Hi, my name is Mark Blafkin with the Association for Competitive Technology. At the height of the WSIS debate over the future of ICANN and whether or not to replace it, a colleague of mine wrote an op ed in the Financial Times. In it he wrote this effort is being driven under the guise of Internet governance, but it is really about Internet control. The past few days, for me, have only reinforced that concept.  Just look at who is calling for these kinds of changes today. We all — every single one of them has, shall we say, a flexible idea about free speech. We all know China’s story, but Brazil really isn’t much better.  Not only have they been caught essentially censoring political journalists, but they even censored the documentaries that were appearing on British and Brazilian TV about that censorship. And then Silvio Berlusconi isn’t even here but he is now calling for Internet governance in an Internet national forum.  And, you know, as we probably all know, he has either bought up or sued every journalist that’s ever tried to criticize him.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   So I am going to ask you to do me a favor. Every time somebody says something specifically about somebody else, that somebody else feels, quite fairly, that they have to respond. And all we do is we understand your opinion, and we understand their opinion, probably both of which we know already. So I would appreciate it if we could be perhaps a little less specific about individuals and territories and just talk about principles.

>>MARK BLAFKIN:  Sure.  In terms of principles, I think we need to be very careful before going forward into these discussions about tearing down this bottom-up, multistakeholder body which is ICANN and replacing it with a top-down, government-led body where governments that have a penchant for essentially censoring free speech have a bigger say in the way that the Internet is run.

>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Thank you.

>>EVERTON LUCERO:   Thank you, Chris. I will be brief.  In fact, I think it’s much more useful for me at this moment to listen to the comments that are so rich in nature than to speak again, since I’ve had my opportunity in the morning. But, anyway, my country was mentioned in a negative way.  And I’m a diplomat.  So if I want to return back home still in safety and with my job there –

[ Laughter ] [ Applause ]

>>EVERTON LUCERO:   So I’m obliged to say a few words about that. At first, because it was completely false.  It just shows a total lack of knowledge and understanding about one of the most vibrant and lively democracies in the world, which is Brazil, in which freedom of speech is a non-negotiable value, shared by society at large.  And, in fact, when I, in name of the Brazilian government, present this kind of idea here, I do that on the understanding that, in Brazil, both the civil society, the private sector, the academics, they are all in agreement with that, because one of the main drives of our government is to have broader consultations and inclusion when defining national governmental positions. So I would recommend you to please get informed about Brazil before making this kind of assumption.

Now, as I’m having the floor, there is something else that I would like to say. It was also mentioned that — perhaps I misunderstood — that I was proposing replacing ICANN by some kind of a top-down approach led by governments. I never said that.  In fact, we are at the GAC.  I am vice chairman.  I am, in fact, very active within the Governmental Advisory Committee, because we believe in a multistakeholder model and we want to work together with all the stakeholders to improve it.  We are only aware that there is a deficiency in that model in what refers to the representation of governments, in particular, from the developing world.  And we want to raise that issue and get to a common understanding on how to address it.  And I will not say anything further, because it will be better to –
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN: Can I ask you, in the same way that I asked that gentleman, can I ask you, can you tell me just one thing that you would like to see happen in respect specifically to that, to the GAC and ICANN, that you think would help.
>>EVERTON LUCERO:   One thing that could happen in the GAC, you mean?
>>CHRIS DISSPAIN:   Or one thing that you think could happen within the ICANN framework and its relationship with the GAC to improve it, from your point of view.
>>EVERTON LUCERO:   Yes, sure. One of the items that are included as a benchmark against which ICANN’s progress will be evaluated under the Joint Project Agreement is precisely the role of governments.  And one of these items say that the ICANN board should engage with the — with governments, and, in particular, with GAC, to elaborate further on how the interaction between the board and the GAC should — could be improved. We have seen in the past some improvements, I acknowledge that.  But that has not been enough.  And there hasn’t been a consistent and dedicated study and interaction between the board and the GAC on that. One first step would have to be that.
Thank you.